


Just Another Addiction

by babykid528



Category: Saw (Movies)
Genre: Cutting, F/M, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-05
Updated: 2008-10-05
Packaged: 2017-10-21 23:53:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/231267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babykid528/pseuds/babykid528
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amanda ruminates over her experiences with John.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Another Addiction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [waltzingalong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzingalong/gifts).



> yuletide fic for waltzingalong

_This is what I believe:  
That I am I.  
That my soul is a dark forest._

 _My soul is a dark forest. My soul is a dark forest. My soul is a dark forest._ Amanda arched her back raising her chin so she could feel the sting of the hot water beating on her face. During the few unguarded moments she afforded herself, usually when she would shower late at night after a full day of paying homage to John’s cause, she would imagine her jaw was still raw and tender as it was all those months ago when John first tested her. These moments of reflection were an affirmation of her life, a catharsis, a celebration of Amanda’s world since John. Her world with John. _John._

Amanda choked back the pained sob threatening to bubble up from the back of her throat. Her face contorted painfully as a few tears she could not fight joined the rivulets of steaming water running down her flushed cheeks. She clutched a hand to her breastbone while reaching her other hand out to brace herself against the slick tiled wall as she fought to regain her composure. John’s traitorous body was failing him at a clip. It was all Amanda could do to keep him comfortable anymore. That was why this next test would be the most important of all. John needed to go to a doctor. John needed to go to a hospital. If John had taught her anything, it was that we learn to work with what we can get. Amanda would bring the doctor to him.

The burning heartache abated slightly, leaving Amanda’s hands trembling. She turned so she could lean back bodily against the chill wall and support herself: her breathing labored, her eyes squeezed shut, her jaw clenched painfully.

 _That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest.  
That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back. _

John had changed everything for Amanda and nothing at the same time. He gave her life a purpose, his purpose. He taught her to love life, but not her own life, as he had intended. Amanda loved life: John’s life. She thrived off of John’s destructive purpose. No one had ever shown her love the way he did. She was of no importance to anyone she had ever known and then John, a man she had never even seen before, picked her up out of the suffocating mediocrity she found herself drowning in and he told her that her life was worth more than that. Sometimes, kindness manifests in strange forms. She was a living testament to his cause. She had survived his tests and now she was willingly shackled to him and his creed. The creed he’d adopted from D. H. Lawrence.

She slid to the floor of the dingy shower. Her skin was pruning and her nails were digging into the soft palms of her hands. It had seemed so revolutionary when Amanda emerged from his first test. She was filled with awe and appreciation. John had touched her life without even making his identity known. When Amanda returned from the inquisition by the overzealous police to find John waiting for her in her apartment she was so caught off guard that she had barely been able to breath out a soft word of thanks. Then he had asked her to join him, become his apprentice, and she had nearly wept while she stood there drinking in his appearance and words, as if he were God himself, descended from the heavens and offering her the place of honor, at his right-hand.

Amanda wasn’t John’s only student though. Detective Hoffman was under John’s tutelage as well. Her position at John’s right-hand was tentative at best. Hoffman was the inside man for their little project. He not only knew what the cops were doing about the Jigsaw murders, he knew what they were planning to do. Hoffman was a source of invaluable information and he was the muscle behind John’s operation. Amanda would have been stupid to not feel threatened by Hoffman’s presence. Still, John seemed to favor Amanda. She relished the thought that John might actually care for her the way that she cared for him. Why else would he prefer her assistance over Hoffman’s?

Amanda accepted Hoffman, worked along side him for the sake of John, but she remained ever wary. After all, Amanda was nothing if not severely protective of her things and John, in Amanda’s mind, certainly belonged to her.

 _That I must have the courage to let them come and go.  
That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women. _

Amanda remained sitting below the pelting spray. Her nails were beginning to draw crescent shaped blood marks in her palms. She slammed her head against her bent knee before blinking her eyes open once again and looking upwards. Her blurred vision did not hinder her search along the indented shelf halfway up the wall. Her fingers easily located the thin rectangle of steel she was searching for. Without hesitation she dragged the sharpened blade lightly across the inside of her thigh. Her tension subsided while the stale air in her lungs forcefully exited her lips as a quiet hiss. Amanda stared at the maroon blood trailing down her powder white skin as it dripped into the water on the shower floor and faded to a light pink tendril. She breathed deeply, feeling her shoulders relax, as she dragged the razorblade in another line next to the previous one.

Amanda had tried, for John’s sake, to give up her destructive addictions. The drugs had been easy to do without in comparison to the cutting, but she had given up neither of them for very long. She worshiped John, she devoted her time and her heart to the man, but she could not really grasp the second chance at life he had offered her. John would not offer Amanda the one thing she wanted: himself. Maybe it was a matter of him not being able to offer himself to her. That thought had been consolation for Amanda in the beginning, but it was just an excuse in the end and the excuse was wearing thin just as John’s body was wearing thin.

She had always believed that his interest concerning her ran deep and true. Something about her had obviously sparked this regard. Amanda refused to believe it was only the fact that she survived his life or death test. He had to see something special in her that he knew she could offer for his cause, something that made him trust her enough to continue his legacy after he was gone, but he could apparently not see all she had to offer beyond that. Amanda cut another line into her thigh. In the end, John had become just another one of Amanda’s addictions.

With the fourth slice Amanda felt her composure slip back into place. She sighed her relief just as the water began to turn cold. She reached up to the shelf she got the blade from and pulled herself up off the floor. Her thigh stung with the movement and the cold spray of water before she twisted the shower handle towards the off position. She could feel the physical pain sink into her psyche alleviating the emotional pain of her everyday life with John while reinstating her rationality. Amanda shivered as she stood dripping, pressing a wad of toilet paper to her thigh before wrapping herself in a towel. She stood in front of the sink and wiped away the foggy condensation obscuring her face in the mirror. She would get a doctor for John so she could keep him alive and with her.

 _That I must have the courage to let them come and go._

 _Come and go. Let them go. Let John go._ Never.

 _There is my creed._   



End file.
